This same cycle of self-neglecting service is also pervasive within oppressed communities, as citizens take on the burdens of economic & social disparity. Many of us come to this work because we, or the people we love, have experienced deep injustice. These experiences shape a negative understanding of our self-worth & potential for empowered action. When instinctual mistrust of ourselves & others goes unchallenged, we end up taking actions that reinforce/recycle the wounds of oppression within ourselves & within our relationships.

At the heart of this dynamic is the thinking that self-care is an indulgence. In the social justice work ethic, it is a waste of otherwise productive time. At the “macho” end of this thinking, self-care can even be seen as harmful; making us less effective by “softening” the rigidity of our focus & resolve. Most importantly, behind these canards lies an oppressed worldview – internalized from our own experiences and/or from the communities we serve – that convinces us we do not deserve it.

It is hard to imagine that liberated individuals, communities, societies or worlds can emerge from these broken fragments that make up the individual & collective bodies driving the work today.

Shifting the Paradigm

In the venerable words of Audre Lorde’s radical self-love,“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation & that is an act of political warfare.”

UP’s approach to social change, ignited & sustained by social change agents, seeks to push this ethos to the outer most edge. We want to challenge movements & change makers to claim our individual & collective beings as shaped by the very systems of oppression & injustice that we fight against. Without self-reflection & understanding that we, too, are a product of these insidious cultures & systems as are the materials conditions that our communities & the communities we fight for are living in, we cannot begin to imagine & change our society & world to be more just & equitable. At least not in a long lasting, sustainable way. We believe that each of us needs self-care, healing, & transformation to become the embodied leaders our visions require us to be.

No longer can we drive ourselves, beyond our capacity, & expect that our own trauma, our own shaping, will not rise to the surface & overshadow our good work & principles. We must understand our individual, organizational & community’s historical shaping as the basis of reinventing our selves & our leadership as the methodology towards deep societal change.

Our approach, in this respect, is simple- we believe changing you is changing the world. That self-reflection, -work & -transformation are the most radical change any one individual can commit. Our work deeply integrates this approach on every level & kind of training & development work we do.